The first dozen years of the 20th century saw British gunmakers hard at work, developing those cartridges for the bolt-action repeating rifles which would go on to become the benchmarks of international hunting.
Having made the transition from black powder and pure lead projectiles to smokeless powder and copper-jacketed bullets, the accepted caliber and bullet-weight minimums were definitely being challenged.
Those traveling sportsmen headed for the various British and European colonies were both pushing the boundaries and—through field trials—developing many of “rules” by which we still abide to this day.
Among these cartridges were big-game legends like the .375 Holland & Holland Magnum, .416 Rigby, .404 Jeffery and the .425 Westley Richards. It was common for these prestigious names to pair these larger ‘medium’ bores with a smaller cartridge, one suitable for all game in a pinch, but without the stopping power of their larger siblings.
These pairings included the .350 Rigby Magnum and .416 Rigby, .425 Westley Richards and .318 Westley Richards, .375 Holland & Holland and (initially) the .275 Holland & Holland Magnum or (in 1925) the .300 Holland & Holland Magnum, and finally the .404 Jeffery and .333 Jeffery. I have fallen head-over-heels for the .404 Jeffery, but the .333 Jeffery has sadly faded into near obscurity; yet it played an important role in a few ways, and still makes a great choice for larger thin-skinned game animals.
W.J. Jeffery & Co. of London had released the .404 Jeffery in 1905, designed for use in a Mauser bolt-action repeating rifle, and they necked that excellent cartridge down to hold bullets of .333 inches in diameter. Exactly where that bullet/bore diameter came from is lost to history, and it seems to be entirely proprietary.
Using a case measuring 2.475 inches, with a cartridge overall length of 3.500 inches, the .333 Jeffery fits neatly in a long-action receiver. In near-opposition to the .404 Jeffery’s slight, eight-degree shoulder, the .333 uses a 19-degree 51-minute shoulder to handle the headspacing duties and the 0.538-inch neck will certainly hold even the longest bullets firmly in place.
And long the bullets for the .333 Jeffery are! The original ammunition loadings saw a 250-grain copper-capped hollowpoint bullet at a muzzle velocity of 2,500 fps, generating 3,480 ft.-lbs. of energy at muzzle, and the much more famous 300-grain bullet at 2,200 fps, for 3,230 ft.-lbs. of energy at the muzzle.
Please keep in mind that, common for the era, these velocity and energy figures were derived using a ballistic pendulum and a 28-inch barrel, so in reality the velocity and energy figures you might see in reality would be a bit lower. This is common to a good number of cartridges of this early 20th century-era.
That 300-grain slug has a Sectional Density of .386—a fantastic figure when it comes to penetration—and it was that bullet that helped garner the reputation that the .333 Jeffery had among the early hunters of Africa and India. With a mild recoil and a projectile which offered impressive penetration even on larger game species, the .333 Jeffery has been used on all game species, including the massive African elephant, though the larger bore diameters are invariably better suited for that work.
It was the reputation of the .333 Jeffery’s bullets that led Charlie O’Neil, Elmer Keith and Don Hopkins to mate the .333-inch diameter projectiles with the common and plentiful .30-06 Springfield case, resulting in the wildcat .333 OKH, a precursor to the .338-06, in 1945.
That trio also developed a .334 OKH, using the same projectiles, but with a shortened .300 H&H Magnum case; this was assuredly the inspiration for the .338 Winchester Magnum, which mated a shortened H&H case and the .338-inch-diameter projectiles of the earlier .33 Winchester.
In addition to the rimless cartridge, W.J. Jeffery offered the .333 Jeffery Flanged, a rimmed variant of the design, for use in the single shot and double rifles. Essentially just a rimmed version of .333 Jeffery, the pressures were lowered slightly, and velocities ran about 50 fps or so below those of the rimless cartridge. The .333 Jeffery Flanged remains a rarity, even in comparison to the rimless version.
The major issue with the .333 Jeffery is the lack of available factory-loaded ammunition. When Kynoch ceased the production of ammunition for so many of those cartridges referenced in the classic African and Indian hunting literature, many of those British guns went silent.
Federal Premium did the world a big favor when they brought back ammunition for the .416 Rigby and .470 Nitro Express in 1988, and Hornady’s efforts to provide quality ammunition for many of those British cartridges—the .404 Jeffery, .450/400 3” NE, .450 NE and .500 NE—are most certainly appreciated.
To keep a .333 Jeffery rifle fed, you’re going to have to look to handloading, with cases available from Quality Cartridge (in limited runs), dies from RCBS and CH4D or on a custom basis, and projectiles produced by Woodleigh (in 250-grain softpoint, and 300-grain softpoint and solid), or a custom shop like Hawk bullets from New Jersey. Look to powders in the H4350 or Reloder 19 burn rate, and a good large rifle magnum primer.
“Practical” is not a word I’d associate with the .333 Jeffery, but if I saw a hunter show up in safari camp with a rifle so chambered, I’d beg a look at it.
The cartridge surely represents the Golden Era of African safaris, and that experimental period when the limits of smokeless powder cartridges were being defined. Yes, the .404 Jeffery and .500 Jeffery remain much more popular than the 333 Jeffery, but the fact that the cartridge is wonderfully effective in the field cannot be ignored.
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What I call a bad day at the office
This highly customized Winchester Model 1895 sporting rifle exemplifies the apex of luxury American-made big game hunting guns available in the first decades of the twentieth century. In addition to its premium factory decorations, the gun is also distinguished by its unique combination of special-order features that is not to be found on another Winchester rifle of this type.
Winchester made the rifle in 1913 to the specification of Bernard H. Matthies (1892–1974), the American industrialist, philanthropist, and outdoorsman perhaps best-known today for his sale of a large parcel of land for a fraction of its value to the town of Beacon Falls, Connecticut, for the creation of a public park, today named Matthies Park.
The rifle survives in very good condition and appears to have seen little use. It is one of three deluxe factory-decorated Winchester rifles given to the Met Museum by the Robert M. Lee Foundation in 2018 (acc. nos. 2018.856.4; 2018.856.5a–j)—the first factory-decorated Winchesters to enter the collection.
As the production of firearms became increasingly industrialized in the United States in the 1850s, customers seeking to personalize their machine-made guns could hire an independent gunsmith to add original embellishments, or, alternatively, choose from a variety of customization options executed by skilled decorators employed by the firearm’s manufacturer.
This rifle was decorated by a Winchester factory engraver, possibly John Ulrich (1850–1924). If by Ulrich, it may have been a private commission or executed as a Winchester contractor, as he is believed to have retired from full-time work at the company in 1907. Some Winchester decorators, including Ulrich, maintained independent workshops while working at the company and after leaving Winchester.
The rifle’s blued receiver, box magazine, finger lever, and barrel are engraved with scrollwork and inlaid with gold wire framing three gold-inlaid panel scenes of big game animals—a tiger, leopard, and bear. The buttstock and forestock are carved with floral scrollwork.
These embellishments reproduce designs illustrated in the Winchester Arms Company’s catalogue Highly Finished Arms. First published in 1897, Highly Finished Arms codified for the first time Winchester’s factory decoration options for its line of rifles, offering Winchester customers ten design options for receiver decoration and eight for the stock at varying price points.
They include game scenes surrounded by scrollwork, and foliage motifs combined with scrollwork, with the option to customize for an added cost. The designs were conceived primarily by Winchester factory engravers Herman Leslie Ulrich (1846–1937) and William E. Stokes.
The Matthies rifle features Style No. 1 engraving—the most expensive available—and Style B stock carving—the second most expensive available. Few Model 1895 rifles were embellished to this level, and together these decorations cost nearly ten times the price of the rifle alone.
Other surviving examples of deluxe Model 1895 featuring this combination of engraving and stock carving are serial numbers 78191, 88044, and 88455, and the later rifles 216937, 403953, and 419777. Like the Matthies rifle, these guns are takedowns and their stocks are made from fancy walnut with a high grain contrast.
The Matthies rifle’s numerous special-order features distinguish it among this group. The barrel is threaded for a Maxim silencer—a rare factory modification on Model 1895s. In addition to a special-order Lyman Gun Sight Company leaf sight and front bead sight, the rifle is also fitted with a Lyman flexible rear sight—a spring-mounted sight attached through the upper tang that could return to the upright position after being pushed back by the rifle’s long bolt.
The hand-made, unusually high-combed Monte Carlo style butt stock with rubber recoil pad was almost certainly made to Matthies’s specification, and he would have provided measurements to Winchester to ensure it fit him precisely.
The Winchester Polishing Room Serialization Record Books record that this rifle received its serial number (81851) on April 7, 1913. Unfortunately, the Winchester’s Factory Warehouse Records, which recorded each gun’s specifications, special features, and other data, do not survive for Model 1895s post-dating 1900 (serial numbers 59999 and above).
The Model 1895 began production in 1895 and debuted in Winchester’s June 1896 catalogue. Designed to handle the new, high pressure, smokeless powder cartridges that were coming into widespread use in the United States and abroad, the Model 1895 incorporated design features that differentiated it from previous Winchester lever action rifles, chief among them a long, strong new action, a new nickel steel barrel, a cartridge box as opposed to a tubular magazine, and a jointed finger lever (second model only) that served as an additional safety.
John Moses Browning (1855–1926), whose designs led to the development of nine Winchester rifle models in total, including the Model 1886 and Model 1894, conceived the initial design for the Model 1895. It was the last lever action rifle he designed for Winchester.
The first Model 1895s chambered in .405—Winchester’s most powerful lever action cartridge to date and made for use in the Model 1895—shipped in 1904 and became popular among big game hunters, most notably former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919), who owned three of them. Roosevelt brought the rifles on his famous 1909 Smithsonian Expedition to Africa, lauding their effectiveness in accounts published in Scribner’s Magazine and his 1909 book African Game Trails, and on his 1914 expedition to South America.
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General Hans Cramer By Will Dabbs, MD
Operation Overlord was the official title for the D-Day assault. This was the largest amphibious invasion in human history. Public domain.
Operation Overlord, the 1944 Allied invasion of mainland Europe, was one of the most audacious military enterprises in human history. 160,000 Allied troops drawn mostly from the US, Great Britain, and Canada plowed inland against some 50,000 Axis defenders. The end result was a lodgment from which the Allies eventually pressed all the way to Germany.
The Germans knew we were coming. They just didn’t know exactly when or where. Calais was the obvious spot. It is less than twenty miles across the English Channel from Dover to France near Calais. As a result, the Germans staged a great deal of their defensive effort in this area. However, as we all know, that’s not what Ike had in mind.
The invasion forces moved between 80 and 100 miles by sea to reach the actual landing beaches in Normandy. While the landings were a gory mess, particularly at Omaha, they would have been far worse had the Allies not spoofed the Germans into believing that Calais was their primary landing zone.
In addition to a great deal of good old-fashioned subterfuge, a decorated German general named Hans Cramer unwittingly did his part to help the Allies.
This is Hans Cramer, last commanding officer of the
German Afrika Korps. He unwittingly helped dupe Hitler
into believing that the D-Day force was landing in Calais.
Bundesarchiv.
The Guy
Hans Cramer was the last commander of the DAK, the famed German Afrika Korps. He was captured in North Africa in May of 1943 and held in a POW camp in Wales. In 1944, Cramer was 48 years old.
That seems pretty spry by my current standards, but that’s actually fairly antiquated for a soldier. Once established in his POW camp, General Cramer got seriously sick.
On 23 May 1944, General Cramer was transported across England to be repatriated to Germany courtesy of the Swedish Red Cross. Despite the global hemoclysm that engulfed the world, there was still the occasional humanitarian release between the Allies and the Axis. Cramer’s Allied handlers carefully orchestrated his trek across the UK.
First, he processed through London. Then they motored across the English countryside so Cramer could see the massive buildup of troops, tanks, and military equipment being staged for the invasion. However, his driver led him to believe he was in southeastern England, the perfect place to stage an invasion of Calais.
Once he returned safely to Berlin, Cramer was aggressively debriefed. German intelligence officers mined him for information. Everything he reported was consistent with an objective in Calais.
Everyone knew that George Patton was the Allies’ most effective combat general. In the lead-up to D-Day, his job was to command an enormous fake army. Public domain.
Operation Fortitude
This was but a tiny part of the overall deception plan. They called this overarching enterprise Operation Fortitude. The British officer tasked with putting it all together was named, no kidding, LTC David Strangeways.
At the Tehran Conference in November of 1943, Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt met to hammer out the details of the coming invasion. It was there that Winston Churchill coined the phrase, “In wartime, truth is so precious that it should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” LTC Strangeways took that mandate to heart.
FUSAG, the giant fake army designed to mislead the
Germans about D-Day, even had its own unique unit insignia. Public domain.
Details
General Bernard Law Montgomery’s 21st Army Group was the invasion’s major effort. However, the Allies desperately needed to keep the German 15th Army occupied in the Calais region. To do so, they created a 300,000-man army that did not technically exist.
This giant fake army was technically deployed around Kent, Essex, and Suffolk. Great effort was invested in creating radio traffic that mimicked such a gargantuan military organization.
Squadrons of imaginary aircraft and flotillas of nonexistent ships were folded into the tactical organization. Double agents captured and turned by British MI5 fed carefully-screened information back to their handlers in Germany.
This massive diaphanous unit was called the First US Army Group. They were known by the acronym FUSAG, which obviously sounds pretty cool. They even had their own unit patches and insignia.
A big part of Operation Fortitude was manning it with some proper talent. They chose America’s most flamboyant general to lead this theoretical mob. With the largest amphibious invasion in human history staging to the south, General George S. Patton was put in command of FUSAG. Patton clearly would have preferred commanding real troops. However, he absolutely owned the role.
Patton made speeches and inspected imaginary combat units. A bevy of photographers followed the flamboyant general everywhere he went, documenting his sundry inspections and presentations. The Germans rightfully thought Patton to be one of the best generals in the Allied stable. They fully expected him to command the pending invasion of Europe.
Success…
The ruse was fabulously successful. Even after the Normandy landings, Hitler and his generals still suspected it was a feint to draw attention away from Calais.
This misperception of the tactical situation bought the assault troops precious time to create a foothold in Normandy. The Germans eventually figured out that they had been duped and moved their reinforcements to Normandy right sharpish.
However, by then, the Allies had established air supremacy. That made tactical troop movements in daylight tantamount to suicide.
We all know how it ultimately turned out. Less than a year after the D-Day invasion, Hitler debrained himself in his bunker in Berlin while victorious Russian troops slagged the countryside above. However, all of that might have been very different had it not been for LTC Strangeways’ Operation Fortitude and one unwitting German general.